One Thing, from John Seabrook: Bloody Video Games and “Agincourt”

What New Yorker writers and editors are reading, watching, clicking, playing, and hearing.

I’m playing video games. Started with Fallout 3, an amazing game about a post-apocalyptic capital wasteland, and then moved on to Fear 2: Project Origin, which is more of a horror game, not so intricately designed but compelling nonetheless. Also loaded up Left 4 Dead, which so far hasn’t impressed me much; Call of Duty: World at War, which I haven’t really got very far in but am checking out to see if it might teach my son something about the Second World War; and Grand Theft Auto IV, which I’m kind of hopeless at since I haven’t mastered the driving. It’s interesting to compare the experience of playing these games with reading a bloody historical novel, like “Agincourt,” by Bernard Cornwell, which I read recently.